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Mark Levinson No 5909 Headphone Review

Rate this headphone:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 22 11.6%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 55 28.9%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 88 46.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 25 13.2%

  • Total voters
    190

Cars-N-Cans

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Agree this demo is provocative. My KRK desktop monitors were very idiosyncratic; they changed their spatial characteristics but they didn't match the video in 3D space at all. However, my DCA Aeon 2 Noire phones matched the video perfectly in 3D space, move for move and angle for angle.. Most interesting, I heard the image go behind my head when the YouTube demo showed it, although I have not found another music recording which spatially leaves the frontal, 9-to-3 o'clock hemisphere with those 'phones, until this demo.
Yeah it does depend very much on how the system images and speakers will tend to be unstable if there is inter-ear interaction and reflections. On my nearfield system I referenced it has passive cross-talk cancellation and control of reflections (via adding furniture and other items at strategic locations) and that is the one system that does it relatively accurately since the ears are involved as well. Since it’s two-channel it experiences quite a lot of aberration beyond about +/- 60 degrees, but inside that range it works well to locate things.

My experience is in general headphones will tend to localize somewhat behind the head, along the axis of the two ears since depth cues are not present with the drivers firing directly at the ears. An odd one as I said was my 560S headphones with features inside the cups to aid in interaction with the ears. These actually moved the image over top of my head. This was nice in music listening, but by itself it was an odd effect.

Its an interesting topic. As others have said, there is a lot of research on it, but it’s not as known in the public domain in general as things like speakers and their characteristics. Maybe one day a good reference will be made available that summarizes how headphones behave with respect to imaging. I’ve seen it referenced here and there but it definitely deserves its own treatment since it’s quite nuanced.
 

Robbo99999

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I am not so much of a headphone guy and have only a couple for use. Bose QC25 for travel, Beyerdynamic DT150 with DT100 pads for general use. HD600 is also ok soundise but clamping force is to strong for me. Currently I don’t have crossfeed etc but but I might get it some day. I mainly use my 4.2.2 system when I want more enveloping effects.
I briefly tried crossfeed for music in headphones and thought it was horrible, just muddied up the sound without improving any kind of spatial elements. I am a fan of Virtual 7.1 Surround in gaming though, and of course that will use some crossfeed as part of the processing, but I wouldn't use it personally for music listening.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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I briefly tried crossfeed for music in headphones and thought it was horrible, just muddied up the sound without improving any kind of spatial elements. I am a fan of Virtual 7.1 Surround in gaming though, and of course that will use some crossfeed as part of the processing, but I wouldn't use it personally for music listening.
That’s kind of what I expected it would do since the mixing causes some of the spatial cues to be lost (it is trying to emulate speakers, after all). I ran into the same thing Amir did with this headphone review a few years ago in that when the image narrows and spatial effects are reduced, the sound suffers. I repeated an experiment again comparing sound with and without some spatial effects, and with them reduced and the one thing that was quite striking is how the bass suffered with synths/electronic music. With narrower more myopic imaging the bass lost some of its impact with the loss of the spatial effects. Definitely the spatial effects that can be obtained help quite a lot on the perception of the headphone, even from a tonality aspect. But, there doesn’t seem to be any way to easily quantify this, yet.

Out of curiosity, what are you using to provide the Virtual 7.1? I have not experimented with that since I don‘t play video games or watch movies as much anymore.
 

Robbo99999

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That’s kind of what I expected it would do since the mixing causes some of the spatial cues to be lost (it is trying to emulate speakers, after all). I ran into the same thing Amir did with this headphone review a few years ago in that when the image narrows and spatial effects are reduced, the sound suffers. I repeated an experiment again comparing sound with and without some spatial effects, and with them reduced and the one thing that was quite striking is how the bass suffered with synths/electronic music. With narrower more myopic imaging the bass lost some of its impact with the loss of the spatial effects. Definitely the spatial effects that can be obtained help quite a lot on the perception of the headphone, even from a tonality aspect. But, there doesn’t seem to be any way to easily quantify this, yet.

Out of curiosity, what are you using to provide the Virtual 7.1? I have not experimented with that since I don‘t play video games or watch movies as much anymore.
I'm using this one:
And there's a general thread for Virtual Surround that contains more information, and people trying different virtual surround solutions, and also some demo recordings of the different surround solutions are available to listen to in one of the posts (so you can work out which solution works the best for you):
 

Cars-N-Cans

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I'm using this one:
And there's a general thread for Virtual Surround that contains more information, and people trying different virtual surround solutions, and also some demo recordings of the different surround solutions are available to listen to in one of the posts (so you can work out which solution works the best for you):
Thanks. I have the Sound Blaster AE-7. The creative labs SB command software can be a bit of a headache, but the card itself is very nice. I have not really played much with the surround since its primarily used for music. But, I may experiment a bit to see how it is with headphones.
 

Bugal1998

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Been living with the AKG N700NC M2 for 5 days now. Both out of the box and EQ'd I enjoy them more than the 5909. No treble harshness, no excessive brightness, and bass is better. Not end-game by any means, but certainly my new go-to non-wired headphone when I prioritize enjoyable sound over ANC.

Like the 5909, the AKG noise canceling has similarly mediocre performance vs. the Sony lineup going back to at least the xm2.

The 5909 price/performance is shameful given the existence of the more enjoyable N700NC M2 at 10% of the cost.

I long to be freed of wires and desktop amps for quality audio. I wish someone would make a Bluetooth headphone with high quality codecs, and top tier audiophile performance (Hd800s or similar, Dan Clarke stealth, etc.) and built-in peq to dial in the tonality.

Dear headphone manufacturers, we're waiting for you to get serious about wireless headphone performance...

Edit: to be clear, I find the N700NC M2 to be a truly enjoyable headphone, and the most enjoyable wireless headphone I've experienced by a wide margin.
 
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Kevbaz

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This is really disappointing, I was really looking forward to the release of this product expecting it to be a super premium Harman product to blow all other headphones out of the water but looks not to be the case :(
 

Kevbaz

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Also at this price will the battery be user replaceable if/when it fails. Looks like in UK it comes with a 5 year warranty which is reassuring.
Is it expected they will release firmware updates that will improve the sound/performance of the 5909.
 

Hephaestus

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Also at this price will the battery be user replaceable if/when it fails. Looks like in UK it comes with a 5 year warranty which is reassuring.
Is it expected they will release firmware updates that will improve the sound/performance of the 5909.
I am quoting here David Tovissi, VP & GM Harman Luxury Audio Division:

”One other thing worth mentioning about the No.5909 is that we designed them to allow for future performance upgrades to audio reproduction and ANC. This allows the headphones to keep improving like a great bottle of wine. The No.5909 can be updated as you stated through our Mark Levinson Headphone App.”

Unfortunately we have not seen any improvements taking place since release...
 

Kevbaz

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I am quoting here David Tovissi, VP & GM Harman Luxury Audio Division:

”One other thing worth mentioning about the No.5909 is that we designed them to allow for future performance upgrades to audio reproduction and ANC. This allows the headphones to keep improving like a great bottle of wine. The No.5909 can be updated as you stated through our Mark Levinson Headphone App.”

Unfortunately we have not seen any improvements taking place since release...
That’s a shame no improvements made yet. I wish Mark Levinson had released a passive headphone that was really well made hitting the Harman target without EQ. But I guess the market for headphones is moving in the wireless and portable direction more than for use sat at home wired up to a HiFi :(
 

thewas

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I wish Mark Levinson had released a passive headphone that was really well made hitting the Harman target without EQ.
I thought that one of the advantages of this headphone is that its FR is also very similar in passive mode, i.e. it was tuned to be close to the Harman target?
 

G|force

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SQ and value put aside, I wonder if the *adjective* circular graphic around the unmistakable ML logo is a joke? To me the design looks like a joint effort to put it nicely. It's very odd.
 

Kevbaz

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Has anyone compared the 5909 to the AKG K371, if using wired is there big improvement between the two.
 

markanini

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I know of only two other closed backs with a preference score above 90. Beyerdynamic MMX300 and AKG N700NC.

I briefly tried crossfeed for music in headphones and thought it was horrible, just muddied up the sound without improving any kind of spatial elements. I am a fan of Virtual 7.1 Surround in gaming though, and of course that will use some crossfeed as part of the processing, but I wouldn't use it personally for music listening.
With crossfeed you could make the case for diffuse field headphones. On Harman tuned headphones the effect is too muddy. I used to be very picky, to me Xnor's, Ircam Hear and WavesNX represented the best crossfeed implementations. Most, like Linkwitz, Maier, Moy don't do the proper center panned mids suckout.

In the grand scheme, crossfeed is one among many goals that you may wish to fulfill in sound reproduction. Other things like the punchy liveliness of a Harman tuned headphones does more for my enjoyment so I personally skip on crossfeed now. I've kept using crossfeed on some 1960s stereo mixes for a short while, but HP-filtering the side channel @200Hz is cleaner.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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With crossfeed you could make the case for diffuse field headphones. On Harman tuned headphones the effect is too muddy. I used to be very picky, to me Xnor's, Ircam Hear and WavesNX represented the best crossfeed implementations. Most, like Linkwitz, Maier, Moy don't do the proper center panned mids suckout.

In the grand scheme, crossfeed is one among many goals that you may wish to fulfill in sound reproduction. Other things like the punchy liveliness of a Harman tuned headphones does more for my enjoyment so I personally skip on crossfeed now. I've kept using crossfeed on some 1960s stereo mixes for a short while, but HP-filtering the side channel @200Hz is cleaner.
Older early stereo recordings with hard-panning of the instruments/vocals are the only time I have ever wanted to have crossfeed. On anything nearfield or headphones the over-the-top separation and lonely center gets tiring, but still kind of neat on conventional modern hi-fi setups. Even in this sound demo of a now very famous speaker (FR30 demo: My Romance (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster)), even in the recorded audio the nice "separation" of the instruments comes though. Interestingly, there are versions that have been remastered to include crossfeed of the existing left and right channels as opposed to the original. Still, I don't listen to enough older recordings to justify a crossfeed implementation, but I could see people wanting to have a more conventional listening experience on headphones.
 

jhaider

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Been living with the AKG N700NC M2 for 5 days now. Both out of the box and EQ'd I enjoy them more than the 5909. No treble harshness, no excessive brightness, and bass is better. Not end-game by any means, but certainly my new go-to non-wired headphone when I prioritize enjoyable sound over ANC...

Edit: to be clear, I find the N700NC M2 to be a truly enjoyable headphone, and the most enjoyable wireless headphone I've experienced by a wide margin.

I've written it here before and I'll probably write it again: N700NC M2 is a very very good, and IMO underrated headphone. The fit is unique - the back of your ear (mine anyway) slides between the pad and ear cup. But they're comfortable and very well tuned.
 

Kevbaz

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Just heard back from Mark Levinson support that the batteries are not replaceable which is a real shame for something costing £1000, think I’m going to stick with my AKG K137, would be great if ML release a wired only version of the 5909
Kev
 

Robbo99999

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Just heard back from Mark Levinson support that the batteries are not replaceable which is a real shame for something costing £1000, think I’m going to stick with my AKG K137, would be great if ML release a wired only version of the 5909
Kev
Is it easy enough to access the battery and desolder it or something, then solder in a new one. No idea how this headphone is setup, just sometimes for irreplaceable batteries in devices (eg electric toothbrushes comes to mind) it can mean they're just soldered on. (Obviously not user friendly though!)
 

Kevbaz

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Is it easy enough to access the battery and desolder it or something, then solder in a new one. No idea how this headphone is setup, just sometimes for irreplaceable batteries in devices (eg electric toothbrushes comes to mind) it can mean they're just soldered on. (Obviously not user friendly though!)
Not sure, I’m asking them if the battery is covered under the 2 year warranty.
I don’t want to invest £1000 in something to then have to replace the whole unit in 5 years because the battery failed. Also wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to replace the battery myself ☹️

=== updated above as apparently it’s only 2 year warranty===
 
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Kevbaz

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My ML5909 arrived this week, really pleased with them. Nothing for me to really say negative about them from the fantastic sound, connectivity options, build and packaging.
Been listening wireless to iPad with Qobuz and mostly wired into my RME ADI 2 DAC.
I really hope ML stay in the headphone business as this product to my ears is great and is now my main headphone for home listening as well as out of the house.

Cheers
Kev
 

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